There are clearly differences in the way men and women think. Many studies show that neurons are packed closer together in women’s brain, and according to psychologist Sandra Witelson, this may be one reason why women are better at language and communication skills than men (Edmonds, 2003). But are there also differences in the way men and women perceive things? Are women faster at noticing change? Or do they pay more attention to visual details? If yes, then shouldn’t systems be designed to pertain to this issue-especially when it comes to safety, for example, noticing a new forthcoming lane on an old road, or a new stop sign on an old intersection?
In his 2002 review, Ronald A. Rensink, divides the study of change detection into three phases (Rensink, 2002). The first phase, from mid-1950s to mid-1960s, investigates change detection when change occurs in a saccade. Whilst change detection was considered an easy task at the time, the studies showed poor results proving that detection is not a simple task after all. In the second phase he combines the studies on limits of detection of gap contingent changes with those on visual integration as a basis of limited capacity visual short-term memory. And finally, in the third phase, Rensink emphasizes the idea that change detection involves mechanisms central to the way humans perceive the world.
While Rensink’s work is a great demonstration of how complicated the task of change detection is, and how it relies on many factors such as memory and perception, it does not take into consideration the difference in size and structure between the male and the female brain and how visual information is processed in each.
The focus of this study is on basic visual processing in the mal...
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...y were women more accurate at detecting visual change, they were also able to do it faster. Women also showed a greater level enthusiasm and attentiveness to aesthetics. These findings show that women are generally better than men on change detection tasks.
Works Cited
[1]Edmonds, M. (2003). Wisegeek. Retrieved from http://health.howstuffworks.com/human-body/systems/nervous-system/men-women-different-brains1.htm
[2] Ronald A.Rensink (2002). Change Detection. Retrieved from
http://cogprints.org/2153/3/AnnRev.RR.pdf
[3] Jay Patterson (2007). Female Perception vs Male perception. Retrieved from
http://www.lifescript.com/Life/Relationships/Marriage/Female_Perception_vs_Male_Perception.aspx
[4] Omnia M. Mostaffa (2006). Male/Female Brain Differences. Retrieved from
http://www.medicaleducationonline.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=46&Itemid=69
Both male and female brains are different and extends into a difference of what they can
Processing capacity is a very broad and flexible category according to many researchers. In fact, the quote above mentioned suggests that we often fail to notice things that happen just in front of us (unexpected events that are often salient) either because we were completely absorbed by something else or because we had so many things to do at the same time that we couldn’t pay attention to it. We have all at least once failed to see a friend who was waving at us while eating in the cafeteria or walking in a crowded street. The primary question that we should ask ourselves is: how many things can we attend at the same time? The truth is that we didn’t perceive this friend because of a phenomenon called “inattentional blindness”. The problem is that the richness of our visual experience leads us to believe that our visual representation will include and preserve the same amount of detail (Levin et al 2000). In this paper we’ll see the different theories of inattentional blindness, and the classical theories demonstrating this paradigm.
Men and women differ physically, emotionally and mentally. However, these differences has an advantage. The difference in physical appearances allows men to be attracted to females, and women to be attracted to males. The different emotional beings permit men and women to depend on each other for comfort at times of sadness, anger, happiness and many other emotions. Mentally, men and women think very differently, but this difference accounts for a gender to be curious and wanting to find out how the opposite sex thinks. Analyzing the difference in behaviors in both males and females, judging from effects of the brain, effects of inherited genes, in comparison to the effects of the environment and surroundings, reveals that the vast differences in males and females results from the effects of
Association for Psychological Science. "Sex Differences In Memory: Women Better Than Men At Remembering Everyday Events." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 21 February 2008..
From the very beginning of life boys and girls are already different. The common topic of discussion is which gender’s brain matures faster. People often hear that girls mature much faster than boys. In fact this is not true; the genders don’t really play a part in the maturation process, because it is all about what you are exposed to in life. Although research has shown girls to have way more verbal skills through the preschool stages, but it then declines drastically around age seven . Girls have also been proven to do better than boys in reading and writing all the way through high school. Most of these studies were done in co-ed schools. Studies have shown that single gender schools are more helpful for both genders. The statistics were basically the same from these types of schools. I do think your brain matures faster based of the things you are exposed to. When these say research was done globally, the statistics varied, some siding with girls and some in favor with boys. So this proves, that there is a real gender difference, but there is not a proven gender maturation rate in the brain.
Although, there is proof of cognitive and mental variations in the way that two genders process information. For example, women are shown to be more adept at verbal communication and comprehension while men tend to perform better in the visual-spatial category. On the topic of memory, studies show that women are more sensory and memory oriented. In one study at the University of Edinburgh, psychologist Stuart Ritchie and a team of researchers compared data from many different male and female subjects. As Micheal Price states, “Adjusting for age, on average, they found that women tended to have significantly thicker cortices than men. Thicker cortices have been associated with higher scores on a variety of cognitive and general intelligence tests. Meanwhile, men had higher brain volumes than women in every subcortical region they looked at, including the hippocampus (which plays broad roles in memory and spatial awareness), the amygdala (emotions, memory, and decision-making), striatum (learning, inhibition, and reward-processing), and thalamus (processing and relaying sensory information to other parts of the brain).” (Price 2017). So indeed there are differences, however the similarities between genders far outweigh the differences. McGraw-Hill Higher Education argues that “More equivocal are gender differences in activity level, dependency, timidity, exploratory activity, and vulnerability to stress. There are no gender differences in sociability, conformity, achievement, self-esteem, or verbal hostility (Child Psychology).” In turn proving many once believed facts such as “women and men communicate differently, it's biology” into preconceived
Currently, it is still unknown how different men and women really are, at least in the aspect regarding the brain and one’s thought processes. It is a controversial topic, just being discovered and many studies conflict with each other regarding the subject, which leaves for open questions and missing answers. Originally, there was a common understanding that at least cognitively, both genders were born similar. The way their environment affected them was what made them different, and the society surrounding them believably had the largest impact on the difference of an individual. In contrast however, studies in recent times conflict with these older beliefs revealing quite the opposite. Some of today's psychologists agree that a few differences exhibited by male and female brains are innate (Khazan). To be specific, each gender has been found to have correlations in the way they both navigate. Men are more likely in dealing with directions to go about it in a cardinal fashion, using an innate, spatial ability to guide themselves. They rely on specific directions and knowledge in order to correctly know exactly where they are or what they are looking for is in relation to their environment. While females typically navigate memorizing landmarks to travel (Navigational Differences). There are many different theories concerning as to why both genders may have this relation, and as of now they are still being looked into with highly successful studies. As time passes, more and more of these studies are revealing information about the brain, and innate differences among it and the genders. Evidence proves that since the day they are born men and women are different mentally, specifically in the way of navigating and following directi...
During the early years of psychological research, many believed the brain of a male and female was different as their physical appearance in selected areas. The most popular argument was that females had smaller heads and smaller brains than males that brain size was a direct indicator of intelligence and that women must therefore be less intelligent than men. (Hyde, 1990, p.56) The argument overlooked the fact that brain size correlates with the size of the body. Helen Thompson Woolley dismissed the argument on brain size stating, “It is now a generally accepted belief that the smaller gross weight of the female brain has no significance other than that of the smaller average size of the female.” (Hyde, 1990, p.57) During these years, you could only find a meager amount of research using actual psychological methods to determine gender differences.
Our attention is very selective when it comes to getting information from our environment. We could be looking at everything within our environment and miss changes that occur while looking. According to Rensink, O’Regan and Clark (1997), attention is a key factor, meaning when our attention is focused on the area of change then change can be detected. When we fail to detect change, it can result in change blindness. In support of this idea, Simons and Levin (1998) suggest that change blindness occurs if there is a lack of “precise” visual representation of their surroundings. In other words, a person can be looking at an object and not fully notice a change.
Bergmann, K., Schubert, A., Hagemann, D., & Schankin, A. (2015). Age-related differences in the P3 amplitude in change blindness. Psychological Research, 80(4), 660-676. doi:10.1007/s00426-015-0669-6
The same concept was expressed by Edward O. Wilson (1992), father of sociobiology at Harvard University. According to him, females tend to be better equipped in characteristics like verbal and social skills, security needs and empathy than their counterpart. In the other, Males tend to be better in spatial ...
It is proven that the male and female brains differ, but can one prove that it affects the behavior? Many scientists would agree that ones behavior is determined by his/her gender. Although others are convinced that social conditioning is the cause for the differences between the male and female, it is very unlikely that biological differences play no role in behavior. The male and female brains differ not only by how they work, but also on the size. For example, Natalie Angier and Kenneth Chang, neuroscientists, have shown that the women’s brain is about 10 percent smaller than the male’s, on average, even after accounting for women’s comparatively smaller body size. Three brain differences that affect ones behavior are the limbic size, the corpus collosum size, and the amount of gray and white matter.
The male and female brain is very different in many aspects and this fact is unknown to many ...
Women have smaller brains than that of their male counterpart. Since the ability to think is partly determined by the size of the brain it is obvious to an accurate researcher if I were to ignore the differences between the male and female brain. The question to be posed is, with the knowledge of the function of the human brain, can a scientist accurately determine if the differences in the way males and females perform various tasks is a biological phenomena, or rather as a result of social persuasion? All kinds of research have shown that the bigger the brain, generally, the smarter the animal. (1) However, as Emily Dickinson might agree, it is not the size of the brain that counts, but rather what is contained within the brain. Human male brains are, on average, approximately 10% larger than that of the female, but this is because of men's larger body size: more muscle cells imply more neurons to control them. (3) If the size of the brain is not the determinate factor of the differences between the male and female brain what is? Of special interest to researchers of this subject was the amount of gray matter, the part of the brain that allows us to think. The researchers wanted to know if women have as much gray matter as men. (1) It would be logical to conclude that if there is less gray matter, the component of the brain associated with the thinking process, than obviously, biologically men and superior in intellect to women. However, as is the case with many biological researches, more questions arose than were answered. According to one psychology professor at the University of Pennsylvania, there is no difference in the amount of gray matter in men and women. To make up for the smaller brain size, women ...
Sabbatini, R. (n.d.). Are There Differences between the Brains of Males and Females?. "Brain & Mind" Magazine - WWW Home Page. Retrieved April 14, 2011, from http://www.cerebromente.org.br/n11/mente/eisntein/cerebro-homens.html